And what of marriage’s most intimate privileges? Could he bear to go to her bed knowing that she merely tolerated him there? He did not doubt her compliance—she would be as gracious as she had been during their engagement, and would doubtless allow him any liberty he chose to take with an arch smile, but how would he ever know that duty and obligation alone did not motivate her? Foolishly, he had never truly considered whether his own passion could be satisfied without an equal return from her—whether he, or she, could be happy in such an arrangement.
Suddenly, an even colder thought crept over him. What if she fell in love with another? She had lived such a confined life up until now, but in London with him she would meet many men who were personable and intelligent, full of ease and charm. He knew all too well how impossible it could be to regulate one’s own feelings. Elizabeth would never be unfaithful to him, and he did not believe she would deliberately seek another’s attention or affection, but what if her heart betrayed them both? Just thinking of it nearly made him break out in a cold sweat.
Was he trapping her by this marriage? Had he, in his wealth and arrogance, deprived her of the chance to marry as she would have really wished? How long would it be before she began to regret her consent? How long before he could no longer bear the pain of loving her without being loved in return? Weeks? Months?
Tightly gripping his mount’s reins, eyes ahead, back rigid, Darcy began to panic.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Of all the sisterly fights that Longbourn had witnessed through the years, it was the dressing down Elizabeth Bennet gave to her sister Lydia on the last day of May, 1812, that would be remembered longest. Although Lydia was about as sensitive and moveable as a stone, even she sat openmouthed while Elizabeth enumerated, in energetic detail, her follies, improprieties, incivilities, and general shortcomings of a moral, spiritual, social, and intellectual nature.
“Well, gracious, Lizzy,” she said when Elizabeth paused for breath, “I didn’t know you were standing outside the window.”
“That,” replied Elizabeth through her teeth, “is not the point.”
“I don’t know why you’re angry at me. You’re the one who made fun of him so much.”
“But that was before I knew him! I know him now, and you know him, too, at least enough to know what a good man he is—what a kind and generous and patient and noble man he is. He saved you, Lydia; do you understand that? He saved you from ruin and scorn, and then he lowered himself to talk to that blackguard we called a friend, and threatened and bribed and bound himself to him just to make sure that he could not impose on anyone else as he did on you. Do you really think that because Wickham flattered you and told you what you wanted to hear, that makes him a good man? How dare you speak of Mr. Darcy in such terms? How dare you malign him when you owe him everything? You owe him . . .”—she gasped as her eyes filled—“everything!” Then before Lydia could protest again, she turned around and ran from the room.
Lydia looked around at her sisters, who had all sat rapt through the show. “What’s bothering her?”
Jane, in the closest thing she could ever come to an angry huff, rose to her feet and left without a word. Mary stared at her youngest sister with cold disapproval, and even Kitty shook her head. “It wasn’t my fault,” insisted Lydia.
“ ‘The tongue is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell,’ ” quoted Mary, and marched out.
“While I hate to ever agree with Mary,” said Kitty, “she’s right, you know. If Mr. Darcy breaks it off with Lizzy, it’ll be because you were so much trouble. And then where will we be? I know you’ve been hoping she’ll buy you a new ball gown after she’s married, but now you’ll get nothing, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself!” Kitty too stalked out.
Lydia looked around again, this time at an empty room. “What?” she said again.
Mr. Bingley, who assumed that Darcy was either at Longbourn, or wandering a lane with Miss Elizabeth, entered the library unsuspiciously, whistling, only to be confronted by the sight of his friend, back to the door, leaning with both arms on the mantel of the fireplace, his head down between them.
As the tune died on Bingley’s lips, Darcy looked up, and Bingley saw on his face an expression of unmistakable torment. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “What is the matter?”
Darcy did not seem himself. He blinked, looked away and back in an almost dazed fashion. “I—,” he began, then, as if unable to go on, turned his gaze back to the empty hearth. “Bingley,” he began again after a moment. “Charles—” He took a deep breath. “Bingley, what am I to do?” he burst out.
Shocked beyond words, Bingley could only stare at him for several long moments. Then, jolting into action, he moved forward and very gently laid his hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “Come, my friend,” he said. “Tell me what troubles you.”
Half an hour later, the two were seated in opposite chairs. Bingley had poured them both a brandy and was already eyeing the decanter again, but Darcy’s sat nearly untouched by his elbow. Other men might drink when troubled, but not he.
“You’re a man of honor, Darcy,” Bingley was saying. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Yes.” Darcy stared down at the floor. “I know.”
“I mean, the wedding’s in little more than a week!”
“Again, I know!” He stood in sudden agitation. “If I had more time—if I had not so foolishly rushed us along—perhaps then I could have found a way to set her free and save her reputation at the same time, but it’s simply too late now.” He set a clenched fist on the mantel. “Our fate is upon us, whether we like it or not.”
“You did not force her to marry you, Darcy. She accepted of her own free will.” He leaned forward. “Come now, tell me truly: Has she given you any reason to believe that she is unhappy in your engagement?”
“No,” admitted Darcy after a moment. “If she had—if she wanted to withdraw—then it would be different, but I do not think her actually unhappy yet.”
“Well, then?”
“It is the future that I fear! I fear—I will continue to fear—the day that she realizes that she gave up too much to marry me, the day she wishes I were some other man.” He looked away. “I cannot bear the thought of her regret, of being the mistake she made in her youth.” A pause. “You were wiser than I, Bingley. You knew you could not be happy in a marriage of unequal affection. I did not discover it until too late.”
“Well, I don’t know the future, but neither do you. How do you know that she will not be ecstatically happy as your wife—that she will not love you as passionately as you do her?”
“I would give my life for it to be so, but I cannot believe it now!” He began to pace. “What can I offer for her love? A grand house and fine clothes? She does not care for those! Neither will she love me for my noble relations—relations, I might add, who might very well snub her. Elizabeth is lively and gregarious and easy in company, whereas I am not. She loves dancing and conversing and meeting new people, all things I’ve always despised. If it were not for the fact that she had to consider her future, and her sisters’ future, I doubt she would ever have considered me. She does not love me, Bingley, and that’s all there is to it! I must strive to accept it.
“Yet if it were only that,” he continued, “if it were only my own unhappiness, I could live with that, as long as she were happy. I could bear anything for her happiness, even losing her entirely—but to have both of us be unhappy? To live with her every day, to see her unhappy and know that I was the source of her unhappiness . . . that would be misery of the worst kind! A misery,” he added bitterly, “that we cannot escape!”
“It seems to me,” said Bingley cautiously, “that you are presuming a great deal to think that Miss Elizabeth would want to be set free. It may be true that she disliked you once, but that was all long ago.”
“Not so lo
ng, Bingley. She admitted that she regarded me that way even up to the proposal itself.”
“Just the same, I can’t help but remember that six months ago you sat with me assuring me with all certainty that Miss Jane Bennet felt nothing for me but common friendship, an opinion I’ve come to think—to know—quite wrong. How do you know you’re not doing the same thing again?”
“Because . . .” He sighed deeply and came to an abrupt halt. “Because in Elizabeth’s case I’ve always erred in the other direction. I saw flirting instead of antagonism, attraction instead of dislike. I was a fool who thought that offering my hand and winning her love were one and the same!”
Bingley watched him with troubled eyes.
“Even with everything,” he said, “I cannot regret loving her. My only regret is that I did not love her more. If I had loved her more—if I had thought more of her feelings and less of my own—then I would have courted her properly. I would have ascertained the state of her heart before addressing her. I placed her in an untenable position when I proposed as I did; she had to choose between family duty and marrying for affection as she had always wanted. I knew I was forcing her to make that choice, and I did it anyway because I was selfish and arrogant.” Bingley began to protest, but he interrupted him almost savagely. “I was selfish!—because I thought only of how much I wanted her; I was arrogant because I was so certain that marriage to me would be an unalloyed good for her. She was poor; I would make her rich. She was unmarried; I would make her a wife. She was unappreciated and unequalled in her current company; I would take her and place her among society worthy of her. I would give all and be all, and never did I consider how little she truly desired anything I had to offer.”
He turned away, overcome by emotion. Bingley sat silent at first, unable to speak, until finally he stood and went to awkwardly pat his friend’s back. “Come now, you must not despair so! Miss Elizabeth does like you, and in my opinion you are perfectly well matched. After all, I’m lively and gregarious. I like dancing and meeting new people, and I enjoy your company. Why shouldn’t she?”
Darcy managed a slight, wry smile. “It’s not quite the same.”
“No, but just the same, I think you are borrowing trouble for yourself. You must marry her now, you have said it so yourself, so why not be happy? You do still love her?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then all is not lost. Think of it this way: You shall have an entire lifetime to win her love. It’s only been a few weeks as of yet. Far too soon to give up.”
“Give up?” repeated Darcy. “No, I cannot give up. But, Bingley,” he dropped wearily into a chair, “why do I feel as if my love will only ever bring us both disaster?”
Still wearing petticoats and stays, Elizabeth lay across her bed staring morosely up at the green and yellow chintz fabric above. When had she started hating that fabric? “I’m a terrible person, Jane.”
Jane, who was brushing her long hair out before the mirror, suppressed a sigh. “No, you aren’t.”
“I lied to him.”
“You did not lie.”
“I failed to tell the truth, then.”
“Did he ever ask you your early opinion of him?”
“No, but I still should have told him.” She sighed deeply. “I meant to tell him, I truly did. I thought—I thought there would be some opportune moment when I could break it to him gently. Yet every time I ought to have done it, I turned chickenhearted and said nothing.”
Jane tried not to laugh at the term. “Lizzy, you, of all women I know, are not chickenhearted!”
“Not ordinarily, but when it came to him—oh Jane, do you think I have really been the prideful one all this time?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I accused Mr. Darcy of being arrogant, and I suppose he was at one time, but he has admitted to his faults, while I have done everything in my power to hide mine. I did not want him to know that I had ever been so stupid and spiteful.” Jane started to protest, but she shook her head. “No, no! You shall not rob me of my guilt, now that I have so belatedly discovered it. I was stupid and spiteful. Stupid to believe the lies of a man I barely knew—spiteful to speak my opinion so openly and to insist on holding Mr. Darcy’s initial petty offenses against him for so long. You knew better. You saw the evidence of his good character, and you tried to tell me, but I thought myself too clever to listen.” She shut her eyes, throwing a hand across her face. “And now I’ve hurt him again.”
Jane did not know quite what to say.
“I cannot bear that I hurt him, Jane. Not when it was my job to make him happy—when it was in my power to make him happy.” Another silence. “He loves me, Jane.”
“Of course he does.”
“Do you know why? I surely don’t.”
“He loves you because you are lovable.”
“Am I?” She opened her eyes again, holding back tears. “I do not feel it. Perhaps he thought me a better woman than I actually am, and that is who he loved. Perhaps that is why I was afraid—because I feared that he would regret his choice once he knew the truth.”
“I am sure you do not believe that. It would not speak well for Mr. Darcy’s character if he lost all affection for you simply because you had made a mistake.”
“No, you are right.” She remembered his words. I am not fickle in my friendships any more than I am in my love, Elizabeth. “It must have been vanity, then. Have I always been so vain?”
“I think you are being much too hard on yourself.”
“And I think that I am not being hard enough. He deserved to know the truth, Jane. He deserved to hear it from me, precisely so that what happened today would not happen. Did I not know that it might? Have I not feared it since we came back? Yet I—I was too proud to confess it—too proud to admit that I had not actually behaved any better than he. I liked feeling superior to him in some way; it helped assuage my guilt at having accepted him. I do not deserve him, Jane, and that is the truth.”
Jane was silent.
She sat up suddenly, curls tumbling untidily down her back. “He loves me!”
“Yes.” Jane was feeling rather bemused now.
“He has given me everything, and I haven’t given him anything—except scolds, that is, and trouble, and mortifying relations. I haven’t even given him my love.”
“You would love him if you could.”
“Would I?” She looked at her with wide, troubled eyes. “I thought I was trying to love him, but . . . but if I really was trying, why do I not love him already? He deserves to be loved. Any woman with sense would love him, so why not I?”
Jane was quiet for a moment. “Perhaps you do.”
She blinked twice, blankly. “Wouldn’t I know it, if I did?” she whispered. Again Jane was silent. “I’ve been kind to him—or so I told myself. I tried to treat him well, to be charming and companionable. I told myself that I was only being honest in not pretending to greater affection, and I felt quite superior for it, I suppose, but . . . I think now that I must have never really tried. Perhaps I did not think he was worth the effort, at first. I thought companionship and respect would be the most I could hope for, and I was willing enough to give them, but I did not really believe I could love him, so I did not really attempt it. And then there was our mother, and his aunt, and Mr. Wickham, and Lydia . . . and all our horrid, gossipy neighbors—”
“Lizzy!”
“Why did I care what they said? What did it matter, anyway? Not that he was right to be rude to them, but—” She bit her lip. “It’s been one long string of muddles, Jane. We haven’t had a proper courtship at all. The only good thing I can think of is that you and Mr. Bingley are back together again.” Jane blushed. “How could he bear it? How could he bear putting up with it all, day after day, for a woman who did not even have the good sense to love him?”
“Perhaps he had hope.”
“Hope,” Elizabeth repeated. Had she succeeded in finally destroying that hope?
Jane put down her hairbrush and came to sit by her sister. “He has reason to hope, doesn’t he? Look at how you speak of him already! I don’t think it’s so surprising or so wrong that it would take you time to grow in affection, Lizzy. Your engagement has not been very easy, as you said, and you hardly knew him when it started. How could you love him when you did not know him? But now that you do know him, now that you admire him as you ought and you want to love him—do you not think it will be easy?”
Elizabeth’s lips curled up, and her cheeks grew rosy as she thought of it. “Perhaps. How does one go about trying to love a man, do you think?”
“I do not know,” confessed Jane. “I did not have to try.” She hesitated. “Dearest, are you very sure that you do not already love him—at least a little?”
Elizabeth thought long on Jane’s question, sitting at the window that night and staring out towards Netherfield in the moonlight. She had thought so much over the last weeks, until there seemed no possibility of any new ideas, but somehow, now, there was still more thinking to do.
Darcy was . . . well, he was not, it was true, quite the sort of man she had ever imagined herself falling in love with. The hazy, idealized image she had carried with her from childhood came rather closer to Mr. Wickham or Colonel Fitzwilliam than Mr. Darcy. Without ever thinking too much about it, she had supposed that the man capable of winning her affections would be outgoing and animated, able to converse with anyone, universally charming. Had she not thought, when she first met Wickham, that he seemed like the embodiment of all those manly virtues and beauties that she most admired? Yet what a foolishly shallow ideal that had been! A foolish, shallow, girlish dream about a man who did not really exist and who, as it turned out, she would likely not want if he did. Had she grown attached to that paragon of male charm that was Lieutenant Wickham? No, not even while still under his spell. Nor had the colonel touched her heart with his better-informed mind and weightier rank. She had liked him, it was true, and perhaps her heart had raced a bit to imagine him interested in her, but she could not now imagine loving him any more than . . . well, than any man who was not his cousin! Really, who could think of Colonel Fitzwilliam when Mr. Darcy was in the room?
Unequal Affections: A Pride and Prejudice Retelling Page 32